RAINY HAZARDS IN KARACHI Essay

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Karachi was once called the city of lights. It was the city, which never slept. It was the city, which was the symbol of the growing economic and social prosperity of Pakistan. It was a city which provided millions of people with opportunities, success, hope. This monsoon season, however, two days of rain was enough to darken the city of lights and convert it into a cesspool of chaos, dirt and disease.

Beginning in July, the citizens of Karachi watched with increasing dismay as the infrastructure of the whole city was first disabled and then destroyed by the incessant rains caused by the arrival of the monsoon. People lived in sub-human conditions, battling with burst sewerage pipes, nallahs flowing into homes, power cuts for 36 hours and clogged roads which had no provision for drainage. Normal everyday life came to a complete stand still. All social and economic activities halted as people waited for endless hours caught in traffic or waded through pools of dirty water to reach their destinations. Schools, offices and markets were all closed down, as people remained trapped in their houses waiting for the concerned authorities to wake up and take appropriate action. The financial capital of the country not only saw its lights go for months, it also faced the fallout of corrupt officials and poor governance as even main arteries like Chundrigar Road became a death trap with no drainage and covers for man-holes, sucking in people and vehicles in its crippling vice. Public sanitation deteriorated to a point where health experts predicted widespread epidemics. Many people met tragic deaths, victims of open manholes, infected drinking water or naked electrical wiring. The residents of Karachi, the payers of the highest revenues collected throughout Pakistan, watched in stunned disbelief as their whole way of life was destroyed with a few millimeters of heavy rain.

All this happened while the authorities, sat around pointing fingers at each other, giving...